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sales tips

You don’t need a thousand dollar ad budget to make a profit. You just need a solid strategy, persistence and some creativity to turn potential customers into buyers.

Identify Your Target Market
If you’re selling vacuum cleaners, you can certainly rule out teenagers from your audience. So do the needed research and find out what type of people your particular products or services cater to.

Make a list to determine who your target audience is. Be very specific in finding your audience. If you’re opening a clothing store for women, you have a good idea of who you’re going to be trying to reach. But what kind of clothing does your store sell? If it’s petite sizes only, your target audience is made up of petite sized women. If your store sells petite sizes for teens, your target audience is now petite young ladies in high school.

Know Where to Advertise
Are you a small company who caters to your town’s citizens or are you exclusively an online company that sells products over the Internet? Knowing where to advertise and targeting your audience go hand in hand.

Using the clothing store example above, if you’re looking to advertise to elderly adults, a teen magazine isn’t going to cut it. However, a local newspaper may be where you can potentially spend some your ad dollars.

Coupon or Special Offer
Get customers in the door quickly with a coupon or special offer. It doesn’t have to be a four-color fancy coupon. A simple black and white coupon will do or a bold line that says, “Mention this ad and receive 10% off.”

Don’t Forget the Basics
Location, hours, phone, fax, Email and Web site address are all key information so include them in all of your materials. It may seem obvious but sometimes people get so caught up in the selling message, they actually forget their core information that’s vital to the sale.

Getting customers in the door is one of the biggest hurdles you’ll face as a business owner. Using these four key points gives you a clear advantage over your competitors that will help grow your company no matter how long you’ve been in business.